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Cobb county was one of nine Georgia counties carved out of the disputed territory of the Cherokee Nation in 1832. It was the 81st county in Georgia and named for Judge Thomas Willis Cobb, who served as a U.S. Senator, state representative, and superior court judge. It is believed that the county seat of Marietta was named for Judge Cobb's wife, Mary.
The state started acquiring right-of-way for the Western & Atlantic Railroad in 1836. A train began running between Marietta and Marthasville (now Atlanta) in 1845. Before the Civil War, Marietta was also a summer resort for residents of Savannah and Charleston fleeing yellow fever.
During the American Civil War, some confederate troops were trained at a camp in Big Shanty (now Kennesaw), where the Andrews Raid occurred, starting the Great Locomotive Chase. There were battles of New Hope Church on May 25, 1864, Pickett's Mill on May 27, and Dallas on May 28. These were followed by the prolonged series of battles through most of June 1864 until very early July: the Battle of Marietta and the Battle of Noonday Creek.
The Battle of Allatoona Pass on October 5, 1864 occurred as Sherman was starting his march through Georgia. Union forces burnt most houses and confiscated or burnt crops.
The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain June 27, 1864, was the site of the only major Confederate victory in General William T. Sherman's invasion of Georgia. Despite the victory, Union forces outflanked the Confederates.
In 1915, Leo Frank, the Jewish supervisor of an Atlanta pencil factory who was convicted of murdering one of his workers, thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan, was kidnapped from his jail cell and brought to Frey's Gin, two miles east of Marietta, where he was lynched.
Cotton farming in the area peaked from the 1890s through the 1920s. Low prices during the Great Depression resulted in the cessation of cotton farming throughout Cobb County. The price of cotton went from 16¢ per pound in 1920 to 9½¢ in 1930. This resulted in a cotton bust for the county, which had stopped growing the product but was milling it. This bust was in turn, followed by the Great Depression. To help combat the bust, the state started work on a road in 1922 that would later become U.S. 41, later replaced by Cobb Parkway in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
In 1942, Bell Aircraft opened a Marietta plant to manufacture B-29 bombers and Marietta Army Airfield was founded. Both were closed after World War II, but reopened during the Korean War, when the air field was acquired by the Air Force, renamed Dobbins AFB, and the plant by Lockheed. During the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Lockheed Marietta was the leading manufacturer of military transport planes, including the C-130 Hercules and the C-5 Galaxy.
When county home rule was enacted statewide by amendment to the Georgia state constitution in the early 1960s, Ernest W. Barrett became the first chairman of the new county commission. The county courthouse, built in 1888, was demolished, spurring a law that now prevents counties from doing so without a referendum.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Cobb transformed from rural to suburban, as integration spurred white flight from the city of Atlanta, which by 1970 was a black majority. Real-estate booms drew rural white southerners and Rust Belt transplants, both groups mostly first-generation white-collar workers. Cobb County was the home of former segregationist and Georgia governor Lester Maddox (1966–71). In 1975, Cobb voters elected John Birch Society leader Larry McDonald to Congress, running in opposition to desegregation busing. A conservative Democrat, McDonald called for investigations into alleged plots by the Rockefellers and the Soviet Union to impose "socialist-one-world-government" and co-founded the Western Goals Foundation. In 1983, McDonald died aboard Korean Air Lines Flight 007, shot down by a Soviet fighter jet over restricted airspace. I-75 through the county is now named for him.
In 1990, Republican Congressmen Newt Gingrich became Representative of a new district centered around Cobb County. In 1994, as Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in almost fifty years, Gingrich became Speaker of the House, thrusting Cobb County into the national spotlight.
In 1993, county commissioners passed a resolution condemning homosexuality and cut off funding for the arts after complaints about a community theater. After protests from gay rights organizations, organizers of the 1996 Summer Olympics pulled events out of Cobb County, including the Olympic Torch Relay. The county's inns were nevertheless filled at 100% of capacity for two months during the event.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Cobb's demographics changed. As Atlanta's gentrification reversed decades of white flight, middle-class blacks and Russian, Bosnian, Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Mexican and Central American immigrants moved to older suburbs in south and southwest Cobb. In 2010, black Democrat David Scott was elected to Georgia's 13th congressional district, which included many of those suburbs. Cobb became the first Georgia county to participate in the Immigration and Nationality Act Section 287 (g) enabling local law officers to enforce immigration law.
Adjacent Counties
Cities & Communities
- Acworth
- Austell
- Blackwells
- Chattahoochee Plantation
- Clarkdale
- Cumberland
- Due West
- East Cobb
- Fair Oaks
- Kennesaw
- Lost Mountain
- Mableton
- Macland
- Marietta (County Seat)
- Mars Hill
- Northeast Cobb
- Noonday
- Powder Springs
- Powers Park
- Sandy Plains
- Smyrna
- Spring Hill
- Town Center
- Vinings
- Westoak
Cemeteries
Links
National Register of Historic Places
Cobb County Genealogical Society
